US fantasy magazine, Digest-size for the first four issues, then letter-size for the remaining six issues; ten issues from September 1969 to (undated) 1974, #1-#4 published bimonthly by Camelot Publishing, Los Angeles, September 1969 to March 1970, edited by Arthur H Landis; #5-#10 published irregularly by William L Crawford's Fantasy Publishing, California, edited by Gerald Page. From #5 (January 1971), Coven 13 was retitled Witchcraft & Sorcery, and subtitled "The Modern Magazine of Weird Tales" to leave no doubt about what it was imitating (see Weird Tales). There was no newsstand distribution after #6 (May 1971). The magazine achieved no great success and published no memorable stories, though contributions included "Rock God" (November 1969) by Harlan Ellison. Coven 13 also serialized Landis's "Let There Be Magick!" (September 1969-March 1970) which, subsequently revised, became the first novel in his Camelot series A World Called Camelot (1976). Coven 13 was attractively presented and illustrated throughout by William Stout. Witchcraft & Sorcery was, to all intents, a separate magazine, another valiant attempt by Crawford to produce a professional, nationally distributed magazine. It published some enjoyable Sword and Sorcery and weird tales, but nothing of significance. The nonfiction "Jade Pagoda", a nostalgic and bombastic column by E Hoffmann Price, won some praise and was the start of what eventually became his volume of reminiscences Book of the Dead (2001). [FHP/MJE/DRL/MA]

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We passed a couple of major milestones on 1st August: the SFE is now over 4.5 million words, of which John Clute’s own contribution has now exceeded 2 million. (For comparison, the 1993 second edition was 1.3 million words, and … Continue reading →

We’ve reached a couple of milestones recently. The SFE gallery of book covers now has more than 10,000 images: this one seemed appropriate for the 10,000th. Our series of slideshows of thematically linked covers has continued to grow, and Darren Nash of … Continue reading →

We’ve been talking for a while about new features to add to the SFE, and another one has gone live today: the Gallery, which collects together covers for sf books and links them back to SFE entries. To quote from … Continue reading →